When Information's Free, Theft's Easy, Costly

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When Information's Free, Theft's Easy, Costly

In the freewheeling, wannabe, fast-buck world of the Net, the truth of the cybermaxim "information wants to be free" is irrelevant. No matter what information wants, it's there for the taking, and many new-media entrepreneurs the world over have few scruples copying - and profiting from - whatever they can.

"It's no longer enough for a company to have a presence on the Web," trumpet two almost identical Web sites. One is developed and owned by The Buoyant Company Inc. in New York. The other says it belongs to a Singapore firm called Abacus. The incredible similarity of the sites implies what neither mentions: That a Web presence sometimes requires a phalanx of international copyright lawyers.

"Not a quarter has gone by that we haven't had to defend our content vigorously," says Jim Heard, CEO of Buoyant, an 8-year-old design company in a legal fight with Abacus. Buoyant accuses Abacus of lifting its code almost letter for letter in order to kickstart its own business.

"People on the Net have a weak sense of other people's property," Heard says. "There're a lot of cattle rustlers out there."

Jim Davis, webmaster at Virtual Boston, found he had been internationally rustled when he looked up his own site on a search engine. He found his work, all right, but it was on an Israeli server. Pages he had spent months developing suddenly carried Hebrew titles and sported Hebrew ad banners. His frustration and sense of helplessness were immense.

"First of all, they stole my site, and the copy is coming up before mine in the search engines!" he wrote in an email just after discovering the copy. "Second of all, they're making advertising dollars off my content, my HTML, my art, my photos, my everything! Third: They stole my site! I CAN'T READ HEBREW!"

Besides the obvious difficulties of tracking illicit copies and translating anything that might have been rendered in another language, both Heard and Davis face the problem of Internet jurisdiction. In other words, if you're an American company, how do you make sure an Israeli or Singaporean company stops pilfering and profiting from your content?

"If you get jurisdiction in the United States, the main problem is enforcing whatever judgment you get," says Evan Gsell, one of the attorneys representing Buoyant against Abacus. "Say you get an order enjoining the foreign company from using your content. Great. Now go try to enforce it. Then there's the fact that if the case is heard overseas, any US company is likely to be viewed as a big and bad American company coming in to step on the little guys."

The second hurdle, says Gsell, is financial.

"You can get local counsel in the country where the other Web site is, but the problem is expense," he says.

Although well-established design companies like Buoyant, which numbers Dow Jones and Reuters among its clients, can afford to ante up the US$100,000 a year it takes to defend themselves, smaller companies are in a bind, especially when the Web pirates are overseas.

"Intellectual-property law was meant to protect the garage genius, but garage geniuses really can't afford the legal costs of protecting copyright," Heard says. "Especially given the problems of geographical jurisdiction on the Internet, these fights are very expensive. We're working with two international law firms on the Singapore site. It's easy to imagine firms without our financial wherewithal getting swallowed by this type of activity."

"Our biggest defense is our expertise," says Gsell. "Other Web-design companies can steal our content and copy our code, but if they're so weak that they have to do that, they probably can't deliver on the promises they make to clients."